The Jimmy Awards

My last post was for Festivus in the year 2020 so it was pretty negative.  I’ll end the year with something positive.  Today I listened to Dave Dameshek’s annual Sheky Awards.  So I’m stealing the idea and giving out the First Annual Jimmy Awards.  Most of his awards fall under the umbrellas of sports, food, and entertainment so that’s pretty much what I’ll be doing, but I’m not using the same categories that he used for the most part.  Before I get to the awards, I have a couple of notes.  We’ll see if this actually becomes an annual thing.  There’s a decent chance that I’ll completely forget about this by next year or I just won’t be motivated to write the post again.  And I definitely don’t like being called Jimmy (my old friend Bill was the only person who I didn’t mind calling me Jimmy and I haven’t seen him in at least 10 years), but my awards can be the Jimmy’s.  Let’s get started.

Best Game Jim Attended This Year- Long Island Nets 111, Maine Red Claws 102 on January 17.  This one wins by default as it’s the only professional or college game I attended in 2020.  I don’t really remember much about it.  Tacko Fall played for the Red Claws.  I thought the Red Claws won, but apparently they didn’t.

Best Trip Jim Went on This Year- March for Life on January 24.  It was definitely a good trip, but it had no competition.  This is the only time I left the state of New York in 2020.  Hopefully these two categories will have more nominees next year.

Candy of the Year- Reese’s Peanut Butter Christmas Trees.  This one is an upset as the Reese’s Easter Eggs are the favorite to win every year.  I didn’t have many of the Christmas Trees, but the ones I had were really good this year.

Vegetable of the Year- The biggest of all the Sheky Awards is Fruit of the Year.  Pretty much the only fruits I eat are bananas, pineapples, mangoes, strawberries, and blueberries so I’m doing Vegetable of the Year.  I’ve probably eaten more vegetables this year than ever before.  The winner is Green Giant’s frozen Tuscan Seasoned Broccoli.  That gets included every time I get groceries delivered from Target.  It’s good stuff.

Snack of the Year- The three big ones for me this year were peanuts, Boar’s Head Everything Bagel Hummus (with carrots, crackers, or pretzels), and Sun Dried Tomato & Basil Wheat Thins.  And the winner is Sun Dried Tomato & Basil Wheat Thins.  They came on really strong at the end of the year.

Ice Cream of the Year- Vanilla came back strong this year.  I have never been a huge fan, but I developed more of an appreciation for it this year.  Of course, vanilla is the ice cream used in cookie dough ice cream, which is a strong contender for Ice Cream of the Year, but it’s not the winner.  The winner is the classic ice cream sandwich, but from Stop and Shop.  I got them one time from Target and they weren’t as good as the ones from Stop and Shop.  And it has to be the classic kind.  Stop and Shop did peppermint ice cream sandwiches for Christmas and they weren’t as good as the classic.

Fast Food of the Year- My fast food consumption was definitely down this year.  I gave it up for Lent and then with the pandemic I didn’t have any fast food until I got Chick-Fil-A delivered on June 23 (delivery apps are helping me with the food categories).  I think Chick-Fil-A might have been the winner from 2017-2019, but that was the only time I’ve had it in the last nine and a half months of the year (I don’t remember if I had it at all before that, but I probably did).  Other places that would have been in the mix for the last few years would have been Shake Shack and Five Guys.  I haven’t had Shake Shack since the pandemic started and I’ve only had Five Guys once.  So the Jimmy goes to Chipotle, which would have won many times before they started having issues in 2015.  I’ve always liked Chipotle, but it’s just the easiest for me to get delivered with their app (I always use their app any time I get Chipotle and apparently I had it six times this year) and they occasionally offer free guacamole so it’s a runaway winner for Fast Food of the Year.

Pizza of the Year- Little Vincent’s cold cheese slice would have won this award in many previous years, but I don’t know if I had it at all this year.  If I didn’t have it between January 1-March 10, I didn’t have it (I might have had it in that time frame, but I don’t remember).  Jimmy’s of Greenlawn’s buffalo chicken slice definitely could have won this in the past and Johnny D’s of Greenlawn’s barbecue chicken slice had a good run for a little while before the quality declined (there’s now a third pizza place in the location that both of those places once occupied).  And Chef’s broccoli cheddar slice is always in the running and it probably had the early lead.  But the Jimmy for Pizza of the Year goes to the buffalo chicken slice from Jimmy’s of Centerport (I miss Jimmy’s of Greenlawn, but Jimmy’s of Centerport is alive and well).  It was one of the things that I had given up for Lent and then by the time Lent was over, the pandemic had hit and Jimmy’s wasn’t on Door Dash or Uber Eats.  But then they added online ordering and delivery to their website (which is better than Door Dash or Uber Eats because they don’t charge any fees) and the buffalo chicken slice from Jimmy’s finished the year very strong to narrowly edge out the broccoli cheddar from Chef’s.  I hope the cold cheese slice from Little Vincent’s gets back into the running in 2021.

Beer of the Year- This is a strange year for Beer of the Year.  Sam Adams Summer Ale would have been a dynasty if I had been doing this for the last decade and a half.  Sam Adams Chocolate Bock might have snuck in to win a couple of times.  But this year, I wouldn’t have had any Summer Ale if not for my friend John.  Last year was a down year for Summer Ale, but I think it was better this year. Sam Adams Octoberfest has had some really good years recently, but I did not have any Sam Adams Octoberfest this fall (I probably had at least one back in January on my birthday, but that’s not enough for it to be considered) or any other varieties of Oktoberfest either.  The pandemic has affected how much beer I drink (definitely less this year than in the past) and how I obtain beer.  I definitely haven’t gone out to buy beer since the pandemic started so that meant I relied on delivery.  There were a couple of websites that I used for delivery where I was able to get an interesting variety of beer, but they won’t do contactless delivery anymore so I’m better off just getting my deliveries through Drizly even if the selection isn’t the greatest because I have much more control over when it will arrive than the other websites I had used earlier in the year.  It’s too bad because I was never able to try the Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter.  It might not have been good, but there was the potential for greatness.  Anyway, I have two very specific beers that tie for Beer of the Year.  The Jimmy for Beer of the Year goes to the Brooklyn Lager and the Boston Lager I drank after the Dodgers won Game 6 of the World Series.

Restaurant of the Year- I’m not considering fast food here (but no fast food restaurant would have won anyway).  Restaurants that would have been contenders over the last couple of decades would have included Torcellos, Nicky’s, Campania, Dave’s Goldmine Mexican Grill, European Republic, and Canterbury Ales.  Torellos and Canterbury Ales don’t exist anymore and Nicky’s doesn’t do delivery.  So the other three are all contenders, but the winner is a restaurant that I think I only had twice before this year.  And actually, I only ordered from it twice this year, but it’s great for ordering lots of food and saving some for leftovers (one of the orders was right at the beginning of the pandemic when I could only get groceries delivered like every two weeks).  The Jimmy goes to Old Fields Barbecue.  My next order will probably be on my birthday.  It’s really good.

Best TV Show Jim Watched This Year- There are some interesting choices here.  I watched Parks and Recreation and Community for the first time this year.  Seinfeld is always in the running.  The Simpsons and South Park are annual contenders, but I didn’t watch them as much as in the past.  South Park has been hurt in recent years because I watched the new episodes.  This year I only watched the first episode and that definitely didn’t help it.  If I limited South Park to season 4 through the Black Friday Trilogy, it might win.  I think I watched X-Files this year.  I watched at some point recently on Amazon Prime, I think that at least spilled into 2020.  But the winner is The Office.  If I watched as much Seinfeld or Simpsons (seasons 2-8) as I watched the Office, it would be a much tougher decision, but I watched a lot of the Office so it gets the award (it was even able to overcome the fact that I watched seasons 8 and 9, which are terrible and bad until the last few episodes respectively).

Best Movie Jim Watched This Year- I didn’t watch a lot of movies this year, but even if I did, there’s a good chance the winner would still be the same:  The Naked Gun.  It inspired an early pandemic blog post.

Best Player on a Team Jim Likes- We have a newcomer for this one.  It has to be Mookie Betts.  And it was a loaded field.  He beats out Clayton Kershaw (who would have won this award several times), Walker Buehler, Corey Seager (who won the NLCS and World Series MVP Awards), Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Ian Book (the best Notre Dame quarterback since Tony Rice), and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.

Jim’s Favorite Athlete of the Year- He might not be the best player on a team that I like anymore, but Clayton Kershaw is still my favorite.  If I did this every year, the last decade would have looked like this:

2010- Paul Pierce (who also would have won in 2008 and 2009)

2011- Clayton Kershaw

2012- Manti Te’o

2013- Clayton Kershaw

2014- Clayton Kershaw

2015- Clayton Kershaw

2016- Clayton Kershaw

2017- Clayton Kershaw

2018- Clayton Kershaw

2019- Clayton Kershaw

If there were any close calls in the last decade, it might have been Justin Tuck in 2011, but his second Super Bowl victory came in February 2012.  Ian Book would have won in 2018 if we had won our playoff game.  John Shuster deserves an honorable mention for 2018.  If it had been a bad year for the Dodgers and Kemba Walker stayed healthy and the Celtics made it to the Finals and won, Kemba Walker probably would have won.

Best Game Jim Watched on YouTube- Starting in April, I pretty much watched an old game on YouTube every day until baseball started in late July.  Many were games that I had never seen before.  There were a lot of classics in there that don’t win the award:  Game 7 of the 1965 World Series, Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, Clayton Kershaw’s Opening Day home run and shutout in 2013, Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter in 2014, Game 3 of the 2018 World Series, the Miracle on Ice in 1980, the Curling Miracle on Ice in 2018, Isner-Mahut’s 11-hour match from Wimbledon in 2010, Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals, Michael Jordan’s 63-point game against the Celtics in the 1986 playoffs (a game that the Celtics won), Game 4 of the 2008 NBA Finals, Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals, the Ice Bowl, the 1981 NFC Championship Game, Super Bowl XXIII, Super Bowl XXV, Super Bowl XXXIV, the Monday Night Miracle, Notre Dame-Miami in 1988, Notre Dame-Penn State in 1992, Notre Dame-Florida State in 1993.  But the Jimmy for Best Game Jim Watched on YouTube is the Sugar Bowl from New Year’s Eve in 1973.  Notre Dame and Alabama were both undefeated and Alabama was ranked number 1.  We beat them 24-23 to win the National Championship (yet Alabama still claims that year as one of their National Championship years).  We dominated the first quarter, but we only led 6-0 after one.  There were six lead changes in the rest of the game (and like I said, it was 24-23, not like 42-38 or something).  And the style of football was so much more interesting.  The different formations and the creativity in the running game really stood out.  Hopefully we’ll beat number 1 ranked Alabama again tomorrow.

Best Game Jim Watched Live This Year- There are two that stand out and it’s a tie.  The winner is not Game 6 of the World Series, which was a very good game for a playoff game and it’s what I had been waiting to see for pretty much as long as I’ve been a sports fan.  Clayton Kershaw was 4-1 with a 2.93 ERA and 0.91 WHIP in the playoffs (and that includes 2-0 with a 2.31 ERA and 0.86 WHIP in the World Series), but it’s not one of his starts.  The best Dodger game of the year was Game 7 of the NLCS (a neutral fan might pick Game 4 of the World Series, but I did not consider that one).  In Game 7, the Braves went up 2-0, but Will Smith drove in two with a single in the third to tie it.  Then the Braves went up 3-2 in the fourth, but Justin Turner created a crazy double play to prevent any further damage.  Mookie Betts took a home run away from Freddie Freeman in the fifth (his third straight game with a great catch).  Then Kiké Hernandez and Cody Bellinger homered in the sixth and seventh to put the Dodgers up 4-3.  Julio Urias pitched three scoreless innings to finish the game and pick up the win.  And that game is tied with Notre Dame-Clemson 1.  Kyren Williams put the Irish out in front with a 65-yard run to start the game.  We led by as many as 13, but Clemson tied it in the third and took the lead in the fourth.  After Dabo Swinney overturned a pass interference call, we punted back to Clemson and they had an opportunity to run out the clock.  But we stopped them and got the ball back with a minute and 48 seconds left and 91 yards to go to tie the game.  Ian Book completed a long pass to Avery Davis and then found Davis again for a touchdown to tie the game.  We went 91 yards on eight plays in a minute and 26 seconds.  Clemson scored quickly in overtime, but Kyren Williams scored two touchdowns and then Clemson needed to score to keep the game going.  We got back to back sacks and Clemson faced third and long and they couldn’t really do anything on their last two plays and we had our biggest win in at least 27 years.  Notre Dame-Clemson 2 was not fun.  I hope there’s a Notre Dame-Clemson 3.  I don’t think we’re going to beat Alabama, but Notre Dame-Clemson 3 would be an appropriate way to end this college football season.  And hopefully that will get the Jimmy for the Best Game Jim Watched in 2021.

Year of Grievances

“I got a lot of problems with you people and now you’re gonna hear about it!”  It’s Festivus and there are so many grievances to air.  Let’s get right to it.

My first grievance is with society.  This pandemic has been handled so poorly by so many different levels of government and by individuals.  I don’t know if there was a way to keep the virus from getting out of China (maybe there was, there have been other diseases that started in Asia or Africa in the last couple of decades that didn’t become pandemics like this, but I don’t know enough to say if this could have been contained), but once it got out of China, it was going to be bad.  It didn’t have to be this bad though.  So this was a very general grievance, but I should point out that I have no grievance with doctors, nurses, and scientists who are dealing with this virus.  They’ve been doing heroic work over the last year and the vaccines that have been developed will bring this to an end.  I also have no grievance with delivery drivers and people who work in grocery stores or pharmacies.  They’re all awesome.  What I don’t get is why we aren’t trying to limit the damage now.  It’s not like it’s April and we have no idea how long this is going to last.  There’s light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines.  We have Dr. Fauci saying that everybody who wants to get vaccinated should be able to by the spring.  We’ve been dealing with this for over nine months now and we have just a few more months to go.  The summer and early fall were not too bad in New York, but now things are getting really bad again (we just set a new record for most new cases in a single day and hospitals are filling up, but at least the death rate is much lower than the spring).  In the spring, we did stuff to try to stop the spread.  Now it’s like nobody cares anymore.  I don’t get it.  Several of my other grievances will be connected to the coronavirus.

Let’s start with Notre Dame.  I have a grievance with the university for not accepting one of my former students.  I taught him for three years and I’ve kept in touch with him since then.  I was a really good student in high school, but he was a better student and much better person than I was.  I was trying to think of how many students I’ve taught in my 13 years of teaching.  My rough estimate was 400 (that’s probably a bit of an underestimate).  Of the approximately 400 students, I have four that clearly stand out as the best students I’ve ever taught and he’s one of them.  So yeah, he’s in the top 1% of students that I’ve taught.  Notre Dame messed that up.  But I was actually happy that he wasn’t there this semester because life must have been miserable for the students there.

Now let’s get into sports.  The pandemic kept me from going to the Big East Tournament.  It’s one of my favorite events of the year.  I think I went every year last decade except for 2017 when I went to a couple of nights of the ACC Tournament in the Barclays Center instead of the Big East Tournament.  And then, the NCAA Tournament was canceled.  That first weekend of the tournament is probably my favorite weekend of the whole year.  You get 48 meaningful college basketball games in four days.  I always take that Friday off from work.  It’s the best.  I hope we get it back in 2021.

Speaking of Notre Dame and college basketball, I hate to do this, but I have to air a grievance with Mike Brey.  I love Mike Brey (I know, this isn’t how you typically start a grievance).  He’s had a great run at Notre Dame, but it’s fair to wonder if it’s coming to an end.  The 2014-2015 team was the best Notre Dame basketball team of my lifetime and it’s a shame that we just ran out of gas at the end of the Kentucky game.  If we had won that game, we had a real chance to win the National Championship (we were 3-1 that season against the other Final Four teams).  We had another Elite Eight run in 2016 and we were back in the tournament in 2017.  We haven’t been back since.  We would have made it in 2018 if not for injuries.  But the last two years haven’t been good and this year’s team isn’t going anywhere.  I really hope Mike Brey can get the program moving in the right direction again because I do love him for everything he’s done over the course of two decades at Notre Dame, but I’m worried.  The other thing that I’m worried about is that it could be much worse if we don’t make a good choice to replace him whenever that time comes.

I have some football grievances.  I’ll start with the College Football Playoff committee.  Ohio State should have been left out.  They played six games.  They beat two good teams (Indiana and Northwestern), but they weren’t overly impressive in either of those games.  The Dodgers won the World Series after playing 60 games, but it’s not like they played 60 when all the other good teams played 100.  Obviously Alabama and Clemson were making the playoff.  The last two spots should have been two of Notre Dame, Texas A&M, and Cincinnati.  I have a grievance with the coronavirus because it moved the Rose Bowl from the gorgeous setting of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to Jerry World.  Notre Dame is playing in just its second Rose Bowl ever and we have to play it in Jerry World.  Lame.  Of course, the only reason that we’re playing in the Rose Bowl is that it’s going to have more fans than the Sugar Bowl and that’s what Alabama wanted.  If life was normal, Alabama would have preferred the Sugar Bowl over going to California, but whatever.  This will be the second Rose Bowl played somewhere other than Pasadena (the other one was at Duke in 1942 after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor).  Coincidentally, I’ve seen Notre Dame play at the other two locations.

Dabo Swinney has become a villain this year.  I never really had strong feelings about him (if anything, I liked him for the times he beat Alabama and Ohio State in the playoff).  But it’s clear the ACC is letting him give orders now.  He decided that pass interference on Clemson wasn’t pass interference when we played them in November.  That call forced us to punt and gave Clemson a chance to run out the clock.  Fortunately, they didn’t get the job done.  He also decided that Clemson wasn’t playing Florida State and that meant that Notre Dame wasn’t going to play Wake Forest.  So he cost me a fun Saturday of watching Notre Dame beating up on a mediocre ACC team.

I thought I was going to have a grievance with the Big 10 because I was totally cool with their season being canceled.  I’m not happy about Ohio State making the playoff, but it was worth it to see Michigan and Penn State have terrible seasons.  Notre Dame ever joining the Big 10 would be my worst college football nightmare, but being in any conference is just terrible for Notre Dame.  We were in the ACC for this season and it was so stupid.  Everybody wanted Notre Dame to join a conference because our schedule wasn’t hard enough.  Now that wasn’t true to begin with, but it was proven demonstrably false by this year’s schedule.  We replaced our games against USC, Wisconsin (which was supposed to be at Lambeau Field, I had a hotel room booked), Stanford, Arkansas, Navy, and Western Michigan with games against North Carolina, Boston College, Florida State, Syracuse, and South Florida as our one non-conference game.  North Carolina turned out to be pretty good, but our schedule was clearly not as hard and clearly not as interesting as it was supposed to be as an independent.  In hindsight, we should have stayed independent.  We had no control over losing the games against USC, Wisconsin, and Stanford, but we could have kept the six ACC opponents we already had (which already included Clemson), kept Navy, and then added BYU and added a couple other teams like Army, Cincinnati or a Big 12 team (if we wanted a good opponent), or South Florida or whoever (if we wanted a cupcake).  Playing in a conference is just stupid.  Every game in college football is supposed to be meaningful, but even before playing Clemson in the regular season, we knew we’d just end up playing them again in the ACC Championship Game.  Beating them in the regular season was great, but it was kind of undone by our terrible performance in the rematch.  I was hoping that we’d win the game, spike the ACC Championship trophy, and then just have it melted to be made into something useful.  But I have to admit, it would be pretty awesome if we had Game 3 because that would mean we beat Alabama.

I have more grievances with the College Football Playoff system.  When it started, they had the New Year’s Six and that name made sense because they’d have three games on New Year’s Eve and three on New Year’s Day.  As somebody who has always thought that New Year’s Eve is the stupidest celebration of the year (we’re celebrating the arbitrary start of the year and the last time we did that, we got 2020), I loved the idea.  You had the six best bowls spread out over two days.  But because people do care about New Year’s Eve for some reason and ratings weren’t good, they changed how the New Year’s Six games were scheduled.  This year, we gave one on December 30, three on January 1, and two on January 2.  Even under the original scheduling, it was silly when the Rose Bowl wasn’t a playoff game because you’d have the two playoff games on New Year’s Eve and then three other games the next day.  But because the Rose Bowl needed to be played at 5:00 on New Year’s Day, they didn’t put the playoff games on New Year’s Day if it wasn’t a Rose Bowl playoff year.  Here’s what I would do about that.  The two playoff games are always on January 1.  If the Rose Bowl isn’t a playoff game, then have the Rose Bowl in between the two playoff games.  That would be a little weird, but it’s less weird than having the playoff games on December 29 (like they were when Notre Dame made it two years ago) and then several more bowl games after the playoff games.

But really, they messed up the bowls when they went to the BCS.  The problem is that you had one bowl that really mattered and the rest didn’t (now with the playoff, you have two bowls that really matter and the rest don’t).  In the 1977 season, you had four major bowl games all on the same day (January 2 because January 1 was a Sunday) and three of them had a hand in deciding the National Championship.  And going into the day, you didn’t know which bowls would have had a hand in deciding the National Championship.  If number 1 Texas had beaten number 5 Notre Dame, then the Orange Bowl wouldn’t have mattered.  But since Notre Dame won, it mattered that number 2 Oklahoma lost in the Orange Bowl.  So my answer is to start over.  This is one of my favorite ideas that’s never going to happen.  Here’s what I would do (I’ve written about this before, but I’ve been refining the idea).  You play the bowl games and then pick the top two teams from the winners of the major bowls to play for the championship.  You take the five Power 5 conference champions.  The Rose Bowl is the traditional Big 10 vs. Pac 12 matchup.  The SEC champion goes to the Sugar Bowl.  The ACC champion goes to the Orange Bowl.  The Big 12 champion goes to the Cotton Bowl.  The highest ranked Group of 5 Champion goes to either the Peach or Fiesta Bowl.  The rest of the spots are filled by the highest ranked at large teams.  Of the at large teams and the Group of 5 team, the two lowest ranked of those teams play in either the Peach or the Fiesta Bowl.  That eliminates one of those games as possibly having an impact on the National Championship, but those two have less history than the other games so they can deal with that.  So here are the matchups we could have this year under my system:

Rose Bowl- Ohio State vs. Oregon

Sugar Bowl- Alabama vs. Notre Dame

Orange Bowl- Clemson vs. Florida

Cotton Bowl- Oklahoma vs. Texas A&M

Peach Bowl- Cincinnati vs. Georgia

Fiesta Bowl- Iowa State vs. Indiana

So we’d have teams 1-11 and 25 in the rankings (usually number 25 is not going to sneak in, but that’s the way it is this year).  Iowa State and Indiana were the lowest ranked at large teams so they play each other.  As for the other at large teams, I put Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl because the rest of the at large teams were from the SEC and I didn’t want Alabama playing an SEC team.  I used a random number generator to assign the three SEC at large teams and coincidentally it worked out nicely geographically.  The way it would work out in my system for this year, the winner of the Sugar Bowl is getting to the National Championship Game.  Clemson would be in with a win.  But if Florida won, that would probably open the door for Texas A&M or maybe Cincinnati or Ohio State to get into the championship game.  As for scheduling, I think I’d put the Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl in the afternoon/early evening on New Year’s Eve and the other four on New Year’s Day.  New Year’s Day used to mean something in college football.  Then it didn’t.  The College Football Playoff was supposed to fix that and it did when the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are playoff games, but not so much when the playoff games are on December 28 or whatever.  One objection to my idea might be that you could have three undefeated teams playing in three different games.  Like let’s say Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State were all undefeated and they all won their bowl games.  Somebody is getting left out of the championship game.  I think that would be good because it would encourage good non-conference scheduling.  If Ohio State gets left out because their schedule wasn’t good enough, too bad.  I really hope that they don’t go to an eight-team playoff even though it would make it easier for Notre Dame to get in because it would discourage good non-conference games.  If all the Power 5 conference champions would get in automatically, it wouldn’t matter what you did in your non-conference games.  And if there were three spots left for other teams, you wouldn’t want to risk playing a good team out of your conference and losing.

Let’s move on to professional sports.  My first grievance there is with the Jets for being the Jets.  I think that’s all I need to say about them.

In the NBA, my first grievance is with the Clippers.  Yes, the Celtics had a disappointing defeat against the Heat in the playoffs and the Heat lost to the Lakers, but neither of those teams were going to beat the Lakers.  The Clippers were the team that should have beaten the Lakers, but they didn’t get past the Nuggets.  I watched pretty much none of the NBA Finals this year (if I watched any, it was because the TV happened to be on ABC when the games were going on, not because I decided to put on ABC) and that’s the first time I can remember not watching any.  Also, I’m mad at the coronavirus from taking away the opportunity to have Kyrie Irving play in Boston with fans there.  I have a very clear order of my least favorite players right now:

1. LeBron James

2. Kyrie Irving

3. Kevin Durant

4. Anthony Davis

I think if the Lakers and Nets play in the Finals this season, I would hate it even more than when the Patriots and Seahawks played in the Super Bowl.

In baseball, I have absolutely no grievances with the Dodgers.  Their season was awesome and Clayton Kershaw finally got the championship that he deserved (and he was excellent in the playoffs).  I have many grievances with Rob Manfred (not doing more about the Astros, the DH in the NL, the magical runner that appears at second base in extra innings, 16 teams in the playoffs).  And of course, I’m also mad at the coronavirus for taking away 100 Dodger games this season.  I would have seen the Dodgers in person at least three times (the only sporting event I went to for the whole year was a Long Island Nets game in January) and I would have watched at least 75 more games on TV if it had been a normal season.  I’m also mad at the coronavirus for Altuve, Springer, Bregman, Correa, Gurriel, and Reddick not having to face fans on the road.  It would have been like Kyrie Irving facing fans in Boston, only it would have happened in every stadium.

I’ll finish with a baseball movie grievance since I just watched A League of Their Own with my eighth graders.  We just finished the Great Depression and I wasn’t starting World War II the week before Christmas.  So I showed them the movie and it’s an excellent movie, but there’s a plot hole.  Dottie drives in the tying and go ahead runs in the top of the ninth in Game 7.  There were two outs with runners on second and third when she came up.  There’s no way they would pitch to Dottie in that situation.  You definitely put her on with first base open.

I can’t think of a year where grievances needed to be aired more than this one.  There are so many things I didn’t get to do this year and so many people that I didn’t get to see at all this year.  If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably one of the people that I wish I had been able to see.  As I’ve said, the start of the year is completely arbitrary.  And the beginning of 2021 is going to be just as bad as this year has been.  But at some point in 2021, things will be getting better.  I hope to have nowhere near as many grievances to air a year from now.

Happy Festivus!

Party Like it’s 1988 (Not 1993)

Things that happened in 1988:

The Lakers won the NBA Championship

The Dodgers won the World Series

A vice president won a presidential election

4th ranked Notre Dame beat the number 1 ranked team at home

All of those things have happened in 2020.  Unfortunately, the Lakers winning the championship is way too common.  But the Dodgers won a World Series and a vice president won a presidential election for the first time since 1988.  Notre Dame has won two other games against the number one ranked team since then.  We beat Colorado in the 1990 Orange Bowl and we beat Florida State in 1993.  The 1988 college football season ended with Notre Dame winning the National Championship.  Hopefully this season will end that way too.

This was our first game against the number one ranked team since I was a student.  And much like that game, this one lived up to the hype.  Ian Book played the best game of his life (so far).  He threw a couple of deep balls, he ran the ball well, he threw the ball away when he was under pressure (this is something he has not done often), and he led a 91 yard drive with less than two minutes left to tie the game.  Kyren Williams has been amazing.  I wasn’t expecting much out of him this year, but he’s been great.  Even when we’ve been able to run the ball well in the past, we couldn’t do it against the elite teams.  We did it yesterday.  Williams had the long run on the second play of the game to give us the lead.  His average for the rest of the game wasn’t great, but it seemed like he made plays whenever we needed one.  And he had the best game I’ve ever seen from a Notre Dame running back picking up the blitz.  That was fun to watch (it was like watching Mookie Betts running the bases).  Our wide receivers were a pleasant surprise.  Avery Davis made the biggest play of the game and Javon McKinley made some good plays.  They’ve both been better than I expected.  Ben Skowronek has probably been about what I expected.  The offensive line did a pretty good job.  We’ve had great offensive linemen under Kelly, but it always seemed like the offensive line didn’t perform in our biggest games.  We were able to out-physical Clemson last night.

Our defense gave up 40 points, but I thought they were pretty good.  Travis Etienne was shut down.  D.J. Uiagalelei set a record for passing yards against Notre Dame, but we made Clemson one dimensional.  They didn’t have Trevor Lawrence and I did think Uiagalelei missed a couple of throws that he could have made, but they definitely didn’t lose the game because of poor quarterback play).  Jeremiah Owusu-Koromoah’s fumble return was kind of like something I did once or twice in the old NCAA Football video games where you intercept a pitch and return it for a touchdown.

Special teams was mostly good.  Jonathan Doerer made four field goals and only missed a really long one (and Jay Bramblett made a great tackle on that play to save a potential disaster going into halftime).  I was thinking missing an extra point at the end of regulation or at the end of the first overtime would be the worst possible way to lose, but there was no reason for concern.  Kickoff coverage was very good.  Matt Salerno has been sure-handed on punt returns, but I’d like to see somebody who is a threat to do something returning punts.  But if they do everything else well, I’ll live with not having a threat on punt returns.

When we fell behind by seven, I was thinking we should go for two if we scored a touchdown, but then when we scored, I didn’t want to.  Kelly was asked about it after the game and his reason for not doing it was pretty much the same reason I changed my mind:  we worked too hard to score that touchdown and have the opportunity to get to overtime.  But then in overtime, I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to stop Clemson.  (Speaking of overtime, I’m morally obligated to talk about how stupid college football overtime is.  It’s slightly less stupid than Notre Dame playing in a conference because the idea of overtime is not stupid, but the rules that they came up with are just so dumb.). We get back to back sacks to put Clemson behind the chains.  I had flashbacks of when we were one play away from beating USC in 2005.  We had 3rd and 20 after a Trevor Laws sack and then 4th and 9 and then it was the Dwayne Jarrett catch for 61 yards that led to the Leinart fumble and then the Bush Push (by the way, I looked up how long the Jarrett catch was just to make sure, but I definitely didn’t have to look up how many yards USC needed on third and fourth down, I remembered).  But this time we finished it off.

I almost got to see an all time classic win in person against USC in 2005.  After the game I had the thought that if not for the pandemic, I could have been there last night (this game was on our original schedule).  But really, I probably wouldn’t have gone.  I haven’t been to a night game since Jon was in law school.  It would not be fun to have to drive back to a hotel after a night game.  And ticket prices would have been ridiculous.  The other reason I wouldn’t have gone was that it’s November.  I haven’t been to a November home game since Navy in 2013.  After the Stanford game in 2014 (which was early October, also check out that post for my favorite games, the list needs to be updated because this one is definitely at the top of the list of games that I didn’t go to), I pretty much decided that I didn’t want to go to any cold weather games at Notre Dame anymore (this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but September games are definitely my preference).  Of course, it turned out to be much warmer than the last football game I went to, which was at Duke 52 weeks ago.  So it would have been cool to be there in person for a game like that, but I probably wouldn’t have been there even if I could have gone.

I have this ranked as our best win since 1988.  You could obviously make the case for the Florida State game in 1993.  But I think this one was bigger than that.  In 1993, Lou Holtz was in the sixth year of the best extended stretch of Notre Dame football since Ara Parseghian was the coach and Florida State hadn’t won a National Championship yet.  This win was more like beating Miami in 1988.  Clemson has been one of the top two programs in college football for half a decade and Notre Dame has not been on their level during that time.  And also in 1988, our last two wins came against undefeated teams that were two wins and one win away from a National Championship when we played them (USC and West Virginia).

I hope this year’s team can finish like the 1988 team.  It’s going to be tough.  We should win our next four games before a rematch with Clemson, but we play three teams that are better than anybody we’ve played so far other than Clemson (plus Syracuse, who is terrible).  We do have some wiggle room now that we’ve beaten Clemson.  If we did lose a game and then beat Clemson again, that should be good enough to get to the playoff.  But being undefeated in the regular season would give us a chance to make it to the playoff even if we lost the rematch with Clemson.  It would be so nice to play in this stupid conference for a year, win it, and then be independent again.  Really our worst case scenario should be getting the ACC spot in the Orange Bowl.  But I hope this team isn’t satisfied.  This was a great win for Brian Kelly (we can move this game ahead of the Oklahoma game in 2012 as his best win) and the team, but there’s so much more that they have a chance to accomplish.  If we get to the playoff, we’re looking at the possibility of Round 3 with Clemson and teams like Ohio State and Alabama.  If you want to do something great, it’s not going to be easy.  The 1988 team beat teams that were ranked 9, 1, 2, and 3 when we played them (those teams were 4, 2, 7, and 5 in the final poll).  Let’s finish this season the way the 1988 team finished the season and not the way the 1993 team finished the season.  Go Irish!

If Not Now ... Then Hopefully Six Weeks From Now

It’s our biggest home game in 15 years and it means … well … nothing.  Being in a conference is so stupid.  I was okay with being a member of the ACC this season because of extraordinary circumstances, but I was wrong.  We should have just played as an independent.  We already had six ACC games scheduled and I’m sure we could have picked up like two more ACC opponents plus BYU and Army or a Big 12 team or two to put together a decent schedule.  But we’re in the ACC for the year and now we’re playing Clemson, but it means absolutely nothing because we should play them again in the ACC Championship Game and that’s the game that will matter (although I don’t know what would happen if we end up tied with Miami since we don’t play each other and we could both end up with our only loss coming against Clemson).  So being in a conference has turned the most important regular season in sports (college football) into the least important regular season in sports (college basketball).  But we’re playing the game and if we win, I’ll be pretty excited.  If we lose, whatever, but we have to win one of these games one of these days.

I did some research with the help of Alexander Bless’s Notre Dame Football Database and we are 8-16-1 all time against teams ranked number 1.  I was there for the last time we played the number 1 ranked team, the USC game in 2005, and we would have won if not for USC’s highly paid professional player Reggie Bush.  The last time we beat the number 1 ranked team was Florida State in 1993.  Lou Holtz was 3-1 against the number 1 ranked team with that win and wins against Miami in 1988 on the greatest day in the history of sports and a win against Colorado in the 1990 Orange Bowl.  His loss came the following year in a rematch against Colorado in the Orange Bowl by a score of 10-9 (from what I understand there was a terrible penalty call on a punt return that cost us).  Dan Devine was 1-1 against the number 1 ranked team and the win got us a National Championship when we beat Texas in the 1978 Cotton Bowl.  Ara Parseghian was 2-4 against number 1 ranked teams, but he won two out of his last three.  His last win against a number 1 ranked team got us a National Championship when we beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Eve in 1973 (and Alabama still claims that National Championship even though we were undefeated and we beat them).  Frank Leahy was 0-1-1 against number 1 ranked teams.  The tie was one of the classic college football games ever, a scoreless tie against Army in Yankee Stadium in 1946 (one of the many problems with college football’s overtime system is completely eliminating the possibility of a tie).  There were no polls during the season in Knute Rockne’s time.

We’ve played 23 teams who finished the season ranked number 1.  Of course, teams that finish the season ranked number 1 don’t lose much so it’s not surprising that we’re 1-22 against teams that finished ranked number 1.  But we should be 0-22 because the win came against Florida State in 1993 and we should have finished the season ranked number 1.  It’s been a long time since we played a number 1 ranked team, but it hasn’t been that long since we played a team that finished ranked number 1.  The National Championship Game against Alabama and the Cotton Bowl against Clemson were the last two games that we played against teams that finished ranked number 1.  Hopefully this year we won’t play the team that finishes ranked number 1 because hopefully it will be us.

To finish up my thoughts on college football, I was wrong.  I didn’t think they’d finish the season and it looks like they’re going to.  But it’s such a weird season.  Wisconsin will end up playing seven games if they’re lucky.  They might get through their coronavirus outbreak and not be the reason that any more games get cancelled, but they could have an opponent who has an outbreak and then have another game cancelled because of that.  But imagine you had Wisconsin go 7-0.  How do you judge them against a Notre Dame team that hypothetically went 11-1?  Of course, the more likely Big 10 playoff contender is Ohio State and that’s not a fun thought.  I’m glad that the Pac 12 is coming back because I get like 14 hours of football on Saturday now that we have Pac 12 After Dark again, but I didn’t need the Big 10 back at all (actually seeing Penn State lose to Indiana and Michigan lose to Michigan State was fun, hopefully those two have some more losses in them).  Other than not wanting the BIg 10 back, my attitude about this season was that I’d be thankful for whatever college football I could get.  I’m pretty much not holding anything that happens this season against Kelly.  But it would be nice if we could win this game and a major bowl if we’re going to be playing these games.

As for other sports, I’m reminded of what Rogers Hornsby said:  “People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”  That quote takes on new meaning this year.  We now have no sports other than football.  Although I hated everything about how the NBA season ended, I am looking forward to it coming back next month so that I have something to watch.  Congratulations to the Lakers on their 12th championship.  You’re thinking the Lakers have won 17 championships, but you’re wrong.  Five of them were won by the proto-Timberwolves.  It’s like how the Ravens were a new franchise when they moved from Cleveland to Baltimore.  The Minneapolis basketball team was replaced by the Timberwolves so the Lakers don’t get credit for those first five.  And the first one wasn’t even an NBA Championship.  It was a BAA Championship.  Giving the Lakers credit for that one is absurd.  And let us never forget that the Celtics hold an 8-3 lead over the Los Angeles Lakers in head to head matchups in the Finals (9-3 if you include the one time they played the proto-Timberwolves).

So if the Lakers only have 12 championships, that means the Dodgers only have six championships, right?  Wrong.  The Dodgers moved, but they were never replaced.  The NL had teams in Brooklyn and Manhattan and now they have a team in Queens.  The Mets don’t get to claim the championships won by the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.  So that means I have to give the Giants credit for their five championships won in New York, which gives them one more than the Dodgers.  I can live with that.  You can’t say that I’m logically inconsistent.  So the Dodgers are one World Series Championship behind the Giants.  They’ll catch them soon.  They’ve retaken the lead in NL Pennants.  And they have won the NL West 11 more times than the Giants.  So yeah, Giants, congratulations on your World Series Championships in 1905, 1921, 1922, and 1933 that give you the lead over the Dodgers (this is the equivalent of Michigan’s head to head advantage over Notre Dame).  Since my father was born, it's been 7-4 Dodgers.

I have more baseball thoughts.  I had the idea of writing a blog post about Ken Burns’s Baseball documentary when live sports didn’t exist.  But then I started watching old games and that didn’t happen.  It might happen now, but we’ll see.  His Tenth Inning came out in 2010.  He’s talked about the possibility of doing an Eleventh Inning starting with Armando Galaraga’s perfect game that wasn’t.  I would love to see it.  A big part of the Eleventh Inning could be the story of the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw over the past decade.  And a big part of that would be the story of the Astros cheating and beating the Dodgers in 2017.  Fortunately there’s a happy ending to that story.  I hope we get to have a baseball season with fans.  I want to go to games again and the Astros are supposed to go to Dodger Stadium in August.  Ideally, I’ll be able to get out to Dodger Stadium and see how the renovations turned out (I already loved Dodger Stadium and the renovations that they did all seemed like good ways to improve the stadium).  The Dodgers are supposed to come to Citi Field in August for three games so hopefully I’ll be able to go to those (I would not rule out the possibility of going to all three to make up for not going to games in 2020).  I have the Lakers winning the championship as the worst thing in sports during the pandemic, but the second worst thing was the Astros not having to face the fans.  Hopefully next year Altuve, Springer, Bregman, Correa, Gurriel, and Reddick will get what they have coming to them.

It will be fun to have college basketball back.  We were so close to the NCAA Tournament last season when this all went down and there are very few things that I love as much as the NCAA Tournament (no NCAA Tournament was probably the third about sports during the pandemic).  I don’t have particularly high expectations for Notre Dame this year, but I just want to watch college basketball again.  In an ideal world, I’ll be able to get vaccinated and go to the Big East Tournament in March, but I’ll settle for just being able to watch the NCAA Tournament on TV.

In the NFL, the Jets have a quarterback from USC and they’re terrible.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Trevor Lawrence pulled a Peyton Manning and stayed in college to avoid playing for the Jets.  But the Patriots are bad so that’s fun, but Tom Brady winning games isn’t fun.  I haven’t been particularly motivated to watch the NFL this season, but Chase Claypool is having a terrific rookie season.  I wish the Jets had drafted him, but I guess I should be happy for him that they didn’t.

I just did some googling about the NHL and I can’t find any updated information about when it’s coming back.  How is there not a story from the Canadian media about this like every half hour?  I read a story in earlier in the week about the possibility of having the Canadian teams just playing each other because of border crossing issues.  I watched a little hockey when the NHL came back, but the Rangers weren’t around long and you had baseball, basketball, and college football that I was definitely more interested in with the Rangers done.  It’s too bad that Henrik Lunqvist never won the Stanley Cup.  He was a great goalie.  The Rangers have had a top two pick in the draft the last two years so hopefully they’re on their way back up.

Anyway, everything is still weird.  But the Dodgers won the World Series.  Hopefully I’ll look back at 2020 someday and say that’s when everything started going in the right direction again.

Party Like it’s 1955

Ladies and gentlemen, the Los Angeles Dodgers are Champions of the World. That’s a reference to Vin Scully’s call when the Dodgers won the World Series in 1955.  Since their first championship, they have to wait four, four, two, sixteen, and seven years for their subsequent championships.  So 32 years since 1988 was a long wait.  This is going to be a long, rambling post, but here we go.

You know we’ll get to Kershaw.  I just wanted to make sure this was the first picture in this post.

Do you ever think about why you root for the teams you root for?  For college sports, it’s often because of where you went to school (not always, but that’s the case for me).  For professional sports, it’s just geography for many people.  But not for me.  I grew up as a Dodger fan because of my father being a Brooklyn Dodger fan.  I’m a Celtics fan because of my father also.  I don’t know what happened with my brothers.  My theory is the Yankees/Giants vs. Mets/Jets thing was a way to differentiate them because they’re twins, but that doesn’t explain how they grew up as Knicks fans.  For football, I grew up as a Jets fan because my favorite color is green.  And I became a Ranger fan because I first became interested in hockey in 1994.  I’ve spent the better part of the past decade lamenting the fact that my favorite color was green.  Between the Patriots cheating and winning all the time, the Jets being the Jets, Rex Ryan acting like a moron, and USC quarterbacks, I’ve lost so much interest in the Jets (maybe they’ll end up with Trevor Lawrence and I’ll get back in, but it won’t be the same) and in the NFL in general.  I’ve regretted being a Jets fan, but I’ve never regretted being a Dodger fan even though they couldn’t win the World Series.  There’s something cool about being a fan of the team of Jackie Robinson, the team that had Vin Scully calling games for 67 years, the team that always battled the Yankees and finally beat them in 1955, the team of the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time (Koufax) and perhaps the greatest left-handed pitcher since then (Kershaw, it’s either him or Randy Johnson as the best since Koufax), and the team that has called Ebbets Field and Dodger Stadium home.

My first sports memories involve the 1988 Dodgers.  I am almost certain that four-year-old Jim was at Shea Stadium for a Dodgers-Mets game that was rained out.  They played on Friday, September 2, and Saturday, September 3, but there was no game on Sunday, September 4.  I’m pretty sure I was at Shea Stadium that day, but they never started the game.  I almost certainly didn’t watch Kirk Gibson’s home run live (it would have been pretty late at night), but I was definitely aware of it.  The first game that I went to that was actually played was August 18 of the following year.  Orel Hershiser was pitching for the Dodgers.  David Cone was pitching for the Mets.  The Mets won 3-2.  I cried leaving the game.  The 90s was not a good decade for the Dodgers.  They had a bunch of Rookies of the Year, but they won a total of 0 playoff games.  Things got better in the next decade, but they still only won two playoff series.  And they were left with an owner who had no money.  And in the following decade, they had a young superstar pitcher and new ownership.  The team started spending money again and winning, but they couldn’t get over the hump.  In 2017, they finally made it to the World Series.  The combined score for the series was 34-34, but they lost in seven.  Later we learned that the Astros were cheating.  If not for the Astros cheating, the Dodgers certainly win Game 5 and maybe Game 3 also.  They got back to the World Series in 2018, but again they lost to a team that was cheating (but probably not as egregiously as the Astros the year before).  In 2019, they lost in heartbreaking fashion to the Nationals, who went on to win the World Series.  I think that was the loss that hurt me the most when it happened.  We thought the Dodgers and Astros were just evenly matched and the Astros just edged them out.  The Red Sox were better than the Dodgers.  But the Dodgers were better than the Nationals.  If they played 25 times, the Dodgers would have won more than half of them, but it was only a five game series and the Nationals won three.  And then this year it looked like we might not have a season for a while.  And then when the season started, it looked like it might not last very long early on.  But we made it to the end and the Dodgers are World Series Champions.

Being a Dodger fan on the east coast was difficult growing up in a time when you couldn’t just watch any baseball games you wanted.  I got to watch when they played the Mets or when they were on ESPN (or Fox, but usually the Fox game in New York would be the Yankees or the Mets).  In 2004, I got the MLB.tv package for the last few weeks of the season.  That was a fun team, but then they lost in the first round to the Cardinals in four games (by the way, I was mad that they traded Dave Roberts that year, he could have helped them the way he helped the Red Sox).  But I’ve had the MLB Extra Innings package since 2008 and I also got a real job for the first time in 2008 and that allowed me to go to a lot more games.  I went to 45 Dodger games from 2008-2019 (in 14 different stadiums around the country), but I didn’t get to any this year of course.  I went to lots of Dodger games at Shea Stadium before that 2008, but I don’t know how many.  I have an exact record of all the games I’ve been to since 2008 thanks to the MLB Ballpark app.  The Dodgers are 23-22 in the games I’ve been to since 2008 (they won the last five I went to last year).  I was supposed to go to two games at Dodger Stadium in April, I definitely would have seen them at Citi Field, and I had thought about seeing them in Kansas City and Minnesota with their original 2020 schedule.  Of course, none of that was to be.  I watched pretty much every game until school started.  I think the only exceptions were the few games against the Padres when I didn’t have cable or internet because of a tropical storm.  When school started, I watched all of Kershaw’s starts and any weekend or early games, but they were in good shape in the division so I wasn’t going to stay up late watching every single game.  So I watched as much as I could, but I wish I could have watched them for 162 games and I wish I could have seen them in person a few times.  And I wish they could have won this World Series at Dodger Stadium.  It was nice that they did have a good amount of Dodger fans at the stadium in Texas, but it’s a shame they didn’t get to win it in front of 55,000 Dodger fans at Dodger Stadium.  Speaking of Globe Life Field, it’s the only current stadium that I haven’t been to.  I certainly plan on getting there whenever it’s safe to do so.  And it will be more special going to the place where the Dodgers won their final 11 games on their way to their seventh World Series Championship.

Let’s talk about Clayton Kershaw.  He’s my favorite athlete ever (just search for Kershaw on the blog and you’ll find several posts about how much I love him).  He won three Cy Youngs from 2011-2014 (and he should have won in 2012 also, but people thought knuckleballs were cute or whatever) and an MVP.  He finished third in Cy Young voting in 2015, but that was only because Jake Arrieta pitched like the Major League Baseball season-long version of Robert Horry taking big shots in the playoffs (inexplicably otherworldly) and a Hall of Famer (Zack Greinke) had the best year of his career.  He would have won the Cy Young in 2016 and maybe 2017 also  if he didn’t get hurt.  I think he’s the best pitcher I’ve ever seen.  I’m not considering Roger Clemens because he was a cheater.  Greg Maddux might have the numbers, but I watched baseball and he wasn’t as good as Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez.  I already said it’s between Kershaw and Johnson for the best left-handed pitcher since Koufax.  It’s pretty close between Kershaw and Pedro Martinez.  Check out their best seven-year stretches:

Kershaw has been amazing, but it hurt so much that he couldn’t win a World Series.  And he had this reputation of not pitching well in the postseason.  Some of that was deserved, but it was also overstated. He had plenty of great starts in the playoffs.  There were some disasters, but there were also other games where his numbers ended up looking bad after he had pitched very well because his manager left him in too long and/or he got no help from the bullpen.  Then there was 2017.  He was excellent in that postseason.  In the World Series, he was dominant in 11 innings in Games 1 and 7 in Dodger Stadium.  Game 5 was a disaster in Houston.  What was the difference?  The Astros were cheating at home.  Kershaw deserved his first championship that year.  Kershaw was really good this postseason and he was the only pitcher to win two games in the World Series.  He was great in Game 1 and he was solid in Game 5.  Nobody can say that he didn’t earn this.

Kershaw has certainly had his share of great starts in the playoffs.

I have to mention other players.  Mookie Betts is a special player.  I knew he was good, but I had no idea how good before I started watching him every day.  I’ve never enjoyed watching somebody play the outfield or run the bases like I enjoy watching him do those things.  He’ll be wildly overpaid at the end of his contract when his skills are diminished, but he’s underpaid now and he’s already helped the Dodgers win one World Series.  I think he’s not done.  I was happy for Corey Seager.  I always liked him, but he struggled with injuries.  Last year, he was pretty good, but he was coming back from two big surgeries.  Then going into this season there were rumors about trading for Francisco Lindor or Mookie Betts.  I wanted Mookie Betts because I thought he was better, but also because the Dodgers had Corey Seager at shortstop.  I got that one right.  Cody Bellinger didn’t have the best season, but he hit the home run that gave them the lead in Game 7 against the Braves.  And he made some tough plays look easy in center field.  Justin Turner has been such an important part of the Dodgers during this run.  He’s such a dependable player.  When he tried to talk Dave Roberts out of taking Kershaw out in Game 5, that has to be one of his best moments as a Dodger (the home run to win Game 2 against the Cubs in 2017 is probably his finest moment).  But going back out on the field after the game yesterday, well, that wasn’t one of his finest moments.  Hopefully it was a false positive and everybody will be okay.  Will Smith had a really nice season and it’s nice to have a young catcher who can hit.  Austin Barnes had a really nice season after a couple of down years and he knocked Blake Snell out of the game last night.  And then there’s Chris Taylor, Kiké Hernandez, A.J. Pollock, and Joc Pederson. They just did whatever they were asked.  I was really happy for my fellow Notre Dame alum A.J. Pollock.  He had a rough year last year with injuries.  He didn’t have a big postseason, but he was really good in the regular season.  I’m happy for Kenley Jansen.  He’s the best relief pitcher that I’ve ever seen for the Dodgers.  He might not be the closer anymore going forward, but he’s given the Dodgers everything he had over the years.  Walker Buehler is a special young pitcher.  I hope he stays healthy and the torch can be passed from Kershaw to Buehler.  I’m always confident when he’s on the mound in the playoffs.  Julio Urias was a huge prospect for the Dodgers.  I was at his first career start, which came at Citi Field.  But he’s had his struggles with injury.  He came up huge for the Dodgers in the playoffs.  One last player that should get mentioned is Andre Ethier.  No, he wasn’t on this team, but he was a great Dodger and he deserved to win a World Series in 2017.  Stupid Astros.  I would give him a World Series ring.

Before the game yesterday, I either listened to or watched the final out of the Dodgers previous six championships.  When we didn’t have sports, I listened to the radio broadcast of Game 7 in 1955 and I watched Game 7 in 1965, Game 6 in 1981, and Game 5 in 1988.  I watched all of their wins in 1981 and 1988.  I had seen Game 1 in 1988 before, but I hadn’t seen their other wins.  When I watched Game 5 in 1988, I was a little emotional.  I was alive for it, but I didn’t experience it the way I experience every season now.  This game was the third time during my life where the Dodgers were playing to win the World Series.  I was hoping I’d have to wait longer than a day for the fourth time.  Hopefully it won’t be as long as the three years I had to wait for this opportunity.

I had thought that Game 6 was going to be an issue for the Dodgers.  The Rays had the pitching edge.  But yesterday I had a feeling that they’d get it done.  They won all of the Kershaw/Buehler starts.  I just didn’t think they were going to lose all the other games in the series.  Blake Snell was fantastic for the Rays.  Tony Gonsolin got in trouble, but the only run he allowed was the solo home run to Randy Macho Man Arozarena.  He got the early hook and the bullpen was amazing.  I’m happy Alex Wood got to make a contribution.  He was very good for the Dodgers in 2017 and he was the only pitcher to beat the Astros in the playoffs when they were cheating in Houston.  I thought that if the bullpen could keep it close, the Dodgers could get to their bullpen.  I have to thank Kevin Cash for taking out Blake Snell way too early.  He gave up a single in the sixth and he was out.  The Dodgers had the top of the order coming up, but those three hitters were hitless in six at bats with six strikeouts.  Every Dodger fan was happy Snell was coming out of the game.  It was such a bad move.  Maybe that will make the pendulum swing back away from nerds making decisions about baseball based only on numbers and not on what is actually happening on the field.  Dodger fans were upset about Kershaw getting a quick hook in Game 5, but that was a little bit different.  His pitch count was higher and he was not dominating the way Blake Snell was.  If Snell kept pitching like that, he could have gone at least seven.  But Kevin Cash took him out and the Dodgers promptly went from being down 1-0 to being up 2-1, mostly thanks to Mookie Betts.  Suddenly the Dodgers were nine outs away from being World Series Champions.  Watching the playoffs is just so stressful.  It’s not like basketball.  When one team is just better than everybody else, they’re going to win.  That’s the way the 2008 Celtics were.  The Dodgers were better than everybody else, but that doesn’t always mean you’re going to win in baseball.  They needed to finish it off.  I was hoping they would tack on some runs to make it less stressful.  Mookie Betts came through a home run to give them a little breathing room.  But they didn’t need it as Julio Urias cruised through the last seven batters for the Rays.  He struck out Willy Adames to end it and the Dodgers were finally World Series Champions.  And I got to watch it with my dad.

I celebrated with a Brooklyn Lager in honor of the Dodgers’ roots.  And then I had a Boston Lager, which is my favorite beer that I can get my hands on right now (I finished my Summer Ale, I think I missed the boat on Octoberfest, and I don’t think Sam Adams Chocolate Bock is out yet).  I had a student give me a bottle of champagne last year, but I’ll save that to continue my celebration this weekend with some college football on a night where I don’t have to go to work the next day.  I stayed up until a little after 2:00.  I saw an interview with Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler together on MLB Network and that was the perfect way to end the night. I really wish I didn’t have to go to work today.

Almost final thoughts:  I don’t want to hear about any asterisk on this season.  The Astros get an asterisk for cheating.  The Dodgers had no control over the circumstances of this season.  They were playing under the same rules as everybody else and they still only gave one team a “piece of metal” at the end and they won it.  That reminds me, I loved the Dodger fans booing Rob Manfred.  He deserved it.  And they were given no breaks.  They had to play an extra round against a team that had no business being in the playoffs.  Sure, the Brewers stunk and the Dodgers won pretty easily, but they shouldn’t have had to play that series at all.  I get giving more teams a chance since they only had 60 regular season games, but they should have given the top two seeds an advantage by making it a two-game series where they only had to win one to advance.  In the second round, they could have reseeded to reward the best teams.  That would have given the Dodgers a much weaker opponent in the second round in the Marlins, but the Dodgers took care of business against the Padres.  Once you were down to four teams, you had three teams that deserved to be there.  The Astros did not.  The Braves were good and they went up 3-1 in the series, but the Dodgers came back.  I really had a feeling that they would.  They were due to pull off something like that.  The Braves were really good but the Dodgers were better.  And the Rays were the best team in the American League, but the Dodgers were better than them also.  This was actually the perfect year to play the Rays.  I hate watching games on TV in their terrible stadium, but fortunately the Dodgers didn’t have to go there.  There were actually more fans at the World Series games than there were at the Rays game I went to last year.  I hope I get to see Dodgers-Yankees someday (it’s the most common World Series matchup, but it hasn’t happened since before I was born), but this wouldn’t have been the right year when none of the games would have been in Dodger Stadium or Yankee Stadium.  Beating the Astros would have been awesome, but it also would have been disgusting to have lots of Astros fans there with the games being in Texas.

The Dodgers have often made me feel like Christopher “Mad Dog” in this famous rant from 2003:

He got his one. And then he got two more. The Dodgers are back in the lead for most NL Pennants. Hopefully they’ll add to their seven World Series Championships soon.

I’ll end with this. When the Dodgers lost to the Astros three years ago, I thought of a Vin Scully quote:

I suffered many years waiting for this championship.  But now I’m celebrating.  I love baseball and I love the Dodgers.